What would be the effect on children and young people of a better merger between the current available resources and more coach parents?

The talk from Hector Ruiz addresses mainly a different subject, but the thing that I liked the most about it was his reference to the education that their parents gave him. Always trying to push him to do better.

And that looked great to me, because I feel, with greater and greater certainty, that the direct contribution that parents are having to the education of their children is becoming less and less positive/significant.

I mean, on one hand, our children and youth are growing in an unprecedented way because of all the current connectivity of social media and the internet, but I think that the direct contribution of parents is decreasing in terms of importance and significance. They are becoming more of a services provider rather than a coach or tutor as it was more frequent in the past, I believe.

And I'm in no way judging it, specially under the current social culture that pushes parents to work long hours and not having the time that they would like with their children, in order to be able to provide them with the best opportunities. Besides, I'm not even a parent myself so I'm no one to judge anyone on this.

But I wonder, what would be the effect on children and young people of a better merger between the current available resources and more coach parents?

Jul 12 2011:
Well there is a lot going on with your question.
First off I don't really buy that kids are growing up in new ways due to technology. If anything technology is bringing back a far more traditional manner of child rearing where more emphasis was placed on the tribe than on the family unit. If anything the idea of the family is quite new it's just seems old for us. One benefit from this is that it's less of a handicap to be born into a family that is bad at parenting.

I do feel though families have provided a lot of good and we should be wary of out sourcing all our educational responsibilities to schools. For good and bad parents have a major influence over their children.

Jul 13 2011:
The idea of getting back to a broader educator community is interesting. However nowadays it is quite different because the tribe is not personal and that lack of human interaction is something that has been talked a lot, Richard Saul Wurman has talked a lot about it in his last public talks.

About kids growing up in new ways due to technology, I disagree with you because although understanding the point you've mentioned the fact is that the kid has a lot more independence and liberty to decide the way that he is going with and that is something new that can be good or bad. And I believe it could be better if the family was more involved in this process.

Another interesting opportunity from this that you mentioned (being able to survive bad parenting) is also something I really feel its positive, because sometimes I find myself wondering how can some kid survive some parenting in terms of imposed thinking boundaries.

Jul 13 2011:
Good points, you are right that our tribes are not personal, but I do feel that in time they will be. It does take time to form any community and the online one is no different in that it will take a few generations to figure out the proper social norms. I guess it is different in that people can just walk away from it all pretty easily compared to geographically based tribes.

As for kids having more range to control what they learn, again I have to chalk it up to the novelty of the situation. Many parents are raising children to leave in worlds they themselves are alien to. Whenever technology reaches a plato I am confident that the elders will once again take the reigns of social control and guide it with their wisdom. Right now though most of the wisdom many people accumulate becomes outdated to fast.

Jul 16 2011:
Your long term thinking is really interesting indeed, but what we've seen so far is that there is always something new with each generation more or less. Do you think that a true plato in terms of social and generation wise is really going to happen? I believe that not completely, but in a sense that the common ground for the main life styles will be the same?